We live in a world that is built on dreams. Yet, not all of the accomplishments we take for granted today were the results of a brilliant, smashing success. Many of the items that we use every day from potato chips, to the microwave oven, to penicillin were accidents. Mistakes. Failures that were capitalized on by their inventors. It is critical that every dreamer look at failure as an opportunity even if it doesn’t feel like one at the time.
Remember what I said a few weeks ago? The first thing you should do upon coming across a failure is to pause. Take stock of your progress and look at the reasons why you missed your goal. Every goal produces some sort of outcome, something that can be used on your next goal or on your next dream. For instance, my first book series was meticulously and carefully built, I had maps and governments and people groups all planned out. What they ate, where they went on holiday, even how they felt about the government of each little kingdom. It was built as the back drop to what was a planned series of series each taking part in a different time frame of the same world. The stories I initially wrote for that project are all failures. I could never get them published and they are in such bad shape that I would basically need to start over. So, it was a complete failure right? I don’t think so. First, that world I built was what got me to write my very first books, without it I would probably be writing to you about baking or gardening. Then there is all the work and research I put into that world, which can be used for parts of other stories. The plot ideas for the series can be used in my new series if I feel like they fit. The characters and magic systems could one day rise again in new forms.
Standing amid the wreckage of a dream that has not turned out the way we hoped can often feel like a bunch of wasted time. Often dreamers are asked why they spend so much of their free time working on something that doesn’t pay any of the bills. Looking at the old maps and stories I just talked about do you see it as a wasted time? I don’t. The time I poured into that project was not for nothing, it launched a new hobby and maybe, one day, a new career. The main products I produced (my first two books) did not earn me any income but it did teach me how to be a better writer. And do you know what? Even this writing hobby – or career, or whatever you want to call it – came to me very much by accident.
If you knew me in high school I was the artsy one, my hands constantly dirty from paint, clay, or markers. Usually my hand was smudged with graphite from my pencils. I took every single art class that was offered and excelled. The same could not be said of my English or writing classes. I took as few of those as I could and struggled to maintain above a C grade. Throughout college and into my adult life I had less and less time to draw and paint. As those skills atrophied I began looking at other ways to express my creativity, be it through video editing, animation, and writing screenplays for little flash animations I wanted to one day make for the web. All of that took time I just didn’t seem to have. Encouraged by my friends (I will tell that story in more detail next month) I began to turn screen plays into stories and then I managed to write that very first book. I have been at it ever since.
Nothing we do goes into a vacum. Every failure carries with it a lesson that we can learn. A new skill that can be used elsewhere. A mindset to carry us through the next challenge. Failure is never the end and with the right frame of mind it can be the beginning of something amazing.
Yes, this is very true.